Saturday, January 16, 2010

JUST SOME SATURDAY NIGHT BLITHERING & BLATHERING

Some days have more built in spurts of energy than others but today wasn't one of them. Had some plans to go into Elfrida this morning but we just couldn't seem to get off our keisters. Well, I couldn't anyway. We had cloud cover overhead first thing so it took a long time to warm up. I do not get motivated well in cold weather anymore so it ended up just being a puttering kind of day. Cleaned a few windows, straightened up a few bins & enjoyed sitting in my chair watching the birds at the seed ball feeder. Neighbor Doug came over & installed a new battery in the ATV & that was about the height of activity for the whole day.

Weatherman says some bad weather is heading into Arizona starting about Tuesday so we may be getting wind & rain. Wind means tough sleeping & rain means 6.4 tons of Arizona mud in the motorhome. And we have become aware of something else this past week. The winds of travel are beginning to stir:))

With the exception of maybe 4 or 5 days at the end of last March when we returned from the southwest I have now been blogging daily now for well over a year. First started blogging in September of 07 & my blogger dashboard counter tells me I have made 676 posts. That's a lot of keystrokes. I have always been one of those people who have kind of kept records on & off over the years. Diaries so to speak or just daily recordings in a school notebook. I still have those books at home & came across them one day this past summer. I have several scribblers dating back to the mid to late 50's when I sometimes wrote out my daily activities. I was growing up in Tavistock Ontario at the time & a typical entry would look like this....."Went down to Bob's today & we traded some comic books. It was warm this morning so we walked up town to Joe's Place & split a milkshake. Bob always has more money than me. Roy came in & said he heard John sold his old bicycle. Bob, Roy, & I went back to Bob's & watched television because his Mom & Dad went to Stratford shopping"..................and so it went & so it went.

Some of the diaries I looked back upon were more serious, like back in 1967 & 69 when things were really beginning to get out of control in my life with the alcohol & drugs. Only one bad experience with the drugs so I consider myself very fortunate to have dodged a major bullet in those years. A lot of my friends at the time didn't. That one bad experience was enough to put me off that short lived lifestyle & steered me clear of drugs ever after that. The alcohol addiction was another story but I'm getting off track here. Just started out to say how happy I was when this blogging craze started a few years ago because for people like myself it's a great outlet at the end of each day to sit down at the computer & merrily blather on about the day's activities. It's a way to throw out ideas, express feelings, record events, state opinions, let the creative side roll, bubble up some humor, offer advice, information, & just generally enjoy an enjoyable hobby. And, for somebody like me with a basic fear of people (I think there is a medical term for that) it enables me to communicate in the only style I am comfortable with.

I think the success of any blogger is in the readers. How many of us would continue to do this every day or week if nobody was reading.I'm betting most if not all of us would gradually pack up our keyboards & just fade away. There are basically only 2 ways for a blogger to know if anyone is interested in what they are writing about. One is the counters like Sitemeter or Feedjit that keep a record of every hit or visit on a person's blogsite. These meter monitors tell the blogger how many people have visited their site each day. Some tell the amount of time a visitor spends on the blog, & some show what photos have been viewed. Feedjit shows from what website the visitor came from & what blogsite they go to when they leave. Both Sitemeter & Feedjit often show what city the person has visited from as well. The other way a blogger knows if anybody is reading their blog is by the comments, shouts, & emails. If a blogger isn't receiving any feedback from people but his metering counter is showing 75 people are visiting his site everyday it may mean that people are not interested enough in the content to comment. It may be time for the blogger to rethink his subject matter. So, if your out there reading my fellow blogger’s sites, send them a note & say hello from time to time. Let them know your out here. Let them know they are not just blowing smoke into the wind everyday:))

Some blogs like mine are always way too long but I've always been a blithering blabberfingers anyway. Remember those journals from the late fifties. Tioga George has it figured out though. Just a few sentences or maybe a paragraph 2 or 3 times a day. People don't get bored & come back to his site several times a day to see what he's up to. It's a good way to chalk up the number of hits on a website too. I think George is way out in front of the pack with over a million hits on his blogsite & yep, we got the Tiogaman on our desktop as well.

Well, for not having anything to blog about tonight it sure looks like I have blathered on as usual so with that I will quickly exit myself out of here...........stage right!!

GROANER'S CORNER:(( Long ago when men cursed and beat the ground with sticks, it was called witchcraft.. Today, it's called golf.

19 comments:

Uh oh....I'm a blathering person myself. Maybe I better cut the length up a bit on my blog. I'm just a born talker.

Anyway, Al I enjoy your posts (long or short) and your photos are some of the best. Hope the rain and wind don't get too bad there in the desert. We're expecting it here on the Pacific coast also. Batten down the hatch, I guess.

Al, you have just explained how you feel most comfortable communicating through this blog, dont ever feel your boring anyone even if they dont reply.Myself as an example feel very much the opposite, as the printed words often convey confusing messages."Ilove crackers and cheese" versus "I love my mother" two very different critters altogether.Some days the words just dont come as easily as others,but i do greatly appreciate and look forward to hearing and seeing what Kelly and you are doing each day !

Coming in from stage left....Great post Al...You know,over the past couple of years that I have been reading your blog with all the likes and dislikes and your feelings generally,I find myself saying,boy!This guy is so like me in many ways.....Is he a long lost brother or something?

Thanks for all the post you have contributed and all your future post’. Your blogging has been interesting, informative, educational and better throw in not so interesting just so you don’t get “the big head”. :-)

As a fellow RV’er we are always interested in what people are doing and where they are. The only way to get this knowledge is by following those that post about their travels and experiences.

It’s an inspiration for me to post about our travels and experiences. Thank you, keep posting and above all keep taking those great photos.

Hi Al & KellyI ALWAYS read your blog. In fact it is the always the FIRST one I head far when I'm checking blogs. So please continue with it just as it is. Al, you are a exceptional writer & photographer!Hugs to both of you,JoAnn Dubrouillet

Al, I know you aren't my long lost brother -- you aren't tall enough. But I do believe some of the yarns you spin are kinda tall! Very truly, your blog is the one we most look forward to every day! Your ice picture today are spectacular! So hard to realize the little worlds you can see when you look close up!

I too am interested if I am being read...but more importantly I want to keep a record of the last years of my life and leave that for those who might care to know what I was all about. I guess that is what drives me to keep writing. Sherri and I love your journal and read you as often as we can. Keep up the flow of information on your adventure.

Al--as I was waiting for the computer to warm up this morning a thought went through my head--"wonder how much longer Al & Kelly are going to be on the ranch?" Keep writing, we both read your blog every day.

WOW, that's a lot of comments. I too look forward to reading your Blog every morning. I was wondering what the photos were all about but then I got to the last one I KNEW. Great photos and great Blog. Thanks for making my mornings more interesting :-)

Blogging is a great hobby so I've quit wondering about comments etc. I do it because I enjoy it and it gives me a great place to display photos and to keep taking them. I guess if I ever tire of blogging, I might stop, but until then, I'll keep writing even if I'm the only one!!

Hello~ I've been lurking for a couple of months. I arrived through Laurie and Odel's site. I liked what I saw and have visited most days since then. I love your photos. I really liked what you did with your photos today. The last photo was a mystery solver in my opinion. Very clever.

Hey, what a cheap way to get comments...(lol). Al you know you are one of the best bloggers on the Internet and your photography is an inspiration to Jean and myself. BTW, my puter is kaput or is that kaputer. I'll extract more brain stuff in a blog tonight.

AL'S CAMERA EQUIPMENT

A sometimes asked question readers have about my blog is what kind of a camera do I use. Well I have 8 of them and use them all. Five Nikon DSLR's, two quality Sony point and shoots plus one older Canon point and shoot.

'UPDATE':: July 2017 Thanks to a very generous blog reader I have been able to update my Nikon camera equipment and supplement my camera gear with a couple additional fine Sony cameras as well.I now have a 'donated' Nikon D7200 sporting my new Nikkor 18-300 3.5 zoom lens. Also have picked up a new Nikkor 1.8 primary 35mm lens. In addition I also now have a Sony RX100-3 camera as well as a Sony Exmore Cybershot. I have given my Canon Powershot point and shoot camera to a neighbor.

- In early 2017 I replaced my Nikon D-90 camera with a new D-3400 after the 'auto focus' feature on my aging D-90 quit working. The Nikon D-90 had been my work horse camera sporting a Nikkor 18-55mm 1:3.5-5.6 lens. I used this camera for most of my landscapes and I now have it set up for night photography where 'auto focus' is not necessary.

-My older faithful and favorite Nikon D-40 finally packed it in during the summer of 2015 and I replaced it with a new Nikon D-3100.

- Previous to my Nikon D-90, most of my photos were taken with my old faithful Nikon D-50 from 2006 to early 2011 whereupon the D-50 suffered a rather gruesome death when it fell off a table onto a cement porch in southeastern Arizona. The 70-300mm lens on the camera survived the fall but the D-50 did not. My Nikkor lenses are interchangable between the D-90 the D-3100 and the D-3400.